Martinez Dettinger: Time and Memory (Abram and Ong)

 “Every unique cultural history is but an episode in this larger story; every culturally constructed notion of time presupposes our deep history as carnal beings present to a single earth.”

Excerpt From: David Abram. “The Spell of the Sensuous.” Apple Books. 


Abram and Ong both expound on the difference of relation to time between oral and literate cultures. It is first important to understand than language is the reenactment of a memory. It is a participation in time because through language participates in the changing of the memory. Everytime we remember something and reenact that memory by speaking about it or writing it down, we are changing the memory of the event by highlighting some points, forgetting others, or even maybe by misremembering details. We also change the event because we often tend to remember our emotions and responses to the situation more than the 'factual' events. In this sense, language almost allows us to change the past. In the reenactment of memory we are also thematizing it by focusing on emotions, or the effect of the situation. By doing this through writing, Language cements the change in time. As it is written is how it will always be read. There can be different interpretations of it, but if you write about a sad memory you have had, it will always be thematized as sad because you cannot go back and change the word to happy. With an oral culture, however, the thematization can be changed. The effect of the event can be understood in a new context of events and conversation with those listening to the account of the event. Literacy, then, fixes our memory and interpretation in time. It can make history more concrete and less subjective. Literacy demands that history be an ever-present conceptual context that presupposed our interpretations of the effect of the events that we remember. Oral traditions, however, have a more fluid relationship with history that can allow people to live outside of the constraints of a cemented interpretation of historical circumstances. 

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